Towards sustainable development: Drivers of aggregate and sectoral convergence in per capita non-methane volatile organic compound emissions of OECD countries in two centuries

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to extend the current literature on convergence of pollutants in five different ways including the examination of the convergence of per capita non-methane volatile organic compound emissions in 20 OECD countries for the period, 1820–2019. According to our knowledge, this is the one of the first attempts to investigate the convergence of per capita non-methane volatile organic compound emissions. The convergence of per capita non-methane volatile organic compound emissions across four sectors (agriculture, industry, residential commercial and others; and waste) in these countries has also been investigated. A residual augmented least squares regression method has been used to investigate the stochastic convergence of the series. Furthermore, conditional convergence and sigma convergence of per capita non-methane volatile organic compound emissions have also been examined. The results provide support for stochastic convergence of the pollutants both at aggregate and sectoral levels. The conditional convergence analysis supports the existence of convergence and shows that population growth rate and real gross domestic product per capita are structural factors that facilitate the existence of convergence in most of the sectors. A policy implication from the results is that a combination of international coordination efforts and country-specific factors including the real gross domestic product per capita and population growth rate must considered, when initiating policies aimed at further reducing emissions in these countries.